Development of surfactant-free microemulsion hybrid biofuels employing halophytic salicornia oil/ethanol and oxygenated additives

Abstract Most edible plants used for biofuel production need agricultural lands with freshwater resources, leading to the land crisis in near future. Thus, the halophyte plants which can grow in highly saline lands and tolerate seawater salinity are considered recently. In this work, the production of surfactant-free microemulsion hybrid biofuels according to the extracted oil from two types of halophytic salicornia plants and employing different eco-friendly oxygenated ethanolotropes are investigated to replace fossil fuels. According to the results of low temperature phase behavior, salicornia oil shows good low temperature phase behavior and is quite suitable for biofuel formulation. The nanostructures of the produced biofuels are characterized by dynamic light scattering, small angle X-ray scattering and electrical conductivity. The mean droplet size of all samples were in the range of 0.99 to 22.62 nm which corresponds to the IUPAC standard. According to electrical conductivity results, a large region of ethanol in oil structure can be seen along dilution lines at different weight fractions of additive to salicornia oil which are in agreement with zeta potential and dynamic light scattering results. The presented technique leads to the production of new green biofuels considering the worldwide freshwater shortage.